You've committed the graver sin, Senator Scott

[riversedge]

You've committed the graver sin, Senator Scott

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/19/opinions/scott-bad-names-greater-harm-bailey/index.html





By Issac Bailey

Updated 5:49 PM ET, Sun February 19, 2017


Source: CNN
Sessions bids farewell to Senate after vote 01:53



Story highlights

Last week, Sen. Tim Scott read off a list of insults he received for supporting Jeff Sessions for Attorney General
Issac Bailey: While Scott shouldn't have been disparaged, he committed a graver sin in helping to elect Donald Trump...........................


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(CNN)No one should have more sympathy for Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) than me. As the first black man elected to the US Senate from the Deep South since Reconstruction, Scott occupies a remarkable position in Congress.
And yet when he took to the floor and read off the disgusting comments people had made about him because he is a black Republican who supported Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, my sympathies lay elsewhere.
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That's why I understand Scott's frustration and why he felt moved to take to the Senate floor. The attacks were ugly, unwarranted and wrong.

But there were a couple of things lacking from his spirited speech. He placed a lot of blame on the intolerant left, when that kind of vitriol is not the exclusive domain of either side. I've had to have the police patrol near my home because of threats I've received against my job and my life from white conservatives.


And black conservatives aren't the only black people who are attacked because of their race. Barack Obama has been questioned for not being black enough by some and too black by others, as have I.



Scott also seemed oblivious to a larger concern: that he helped make a man like Donald Trump president even though Scott knew of Trump's many shortcomings and Trump's desire to enact policies that would hurt people of color the most..................................

Scott voted for Trump, a man who said he wanted the discriminatory policy "stop and frisk" to be implemented nationwide, a man who spent years trying to undermine the legitimacy of the nation's first black president and a man who attacked a federal judge based on the judge's ethnicity. Scott called those comments racially toxic -- then supported Trump anyway.
Scott's feelings may have been hurt by a bevy of unsavory characters on Twitter. But Scott's decision to back Trump -- even as South Carolina's other US Senator, Lindsey Graham, refused to -- has hurt more than just people's feelings. It has endangered lives and livelihoods because of the threat of the repeal of health reform.

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But none of that removes the sting from his support of Trump and policies that might take us backward on racial equality and civil rights.

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Scott has said it is time for a healing in America. He can start by not just calling out ugly comments on Twitter but acknowledging the role he has played in the racial divide.